KEY POINTS:
Hamish Pepper and Carl Williams' meteoric rise in yachting's Star class has continued with the pair winning the North American Championships in Miami with a race to spare.
The win comes six weeks after they won the world championships in San Francisco.
Competing in a 79-strong fleet, Pepper
and Williams ended the regatta in Miami with three firsts, a third and a seventh, which was discarded.
Their win in race five meant they were far enough ahead of second-placed Xavier Rohart and Pascal Rambeau of France they did not have to sail the final race yesterday.
In an interview with website sail-world.com, Pepper said he was pleased with his boat's speed upwind.
"We started off well with two good wins on the first day, followed by the third and seventh on the second. The seventh should really have been a third.
"In the fifth race, we opted for a conservative start to stay out of trouble, and then looked for good clear water. We were second for much of the way to a Canadian crew, then we passed them and went on to win by 40 to 60 seconds.
"The breeze here wasn't totally tricky and was readable. Although we didn't get off the start line as well as some, we were sailing very fast."
The result is impressive considering the short amount of time the pair have spent in the class.
Pepper, who was tactician on board Team New Zealand in the last America's Cup, started in the Star in January while Williams, who works for BMW Oracle Racing, has barely had two months in the class.
The pair now have their sights set on qualifying for the Olympics at next year's world championships in July.
Williams is on his way to Auckland where he will train with Oracle over the summer, while Pepper is heading to Lake Como in Italy to oversee the finishing touches on his new Star, which is under construction.
Pepper's next regatta is an Olympic Class regatta in Miami in January where he will team up with David Giles, while Williams is busy with Oracle.
* Graeme Sutherland and Laurie Jury have qualified for this week's New Zealand match racing championships in Auckland, finishing first and second in the qualifying series.
Jury and his crew of Daniel McLean, Robert Hielkema, Damon Jolliffe and Matt Kelway won 10 races on the trot in the round robin before going on to beat Michael Thorpe in the semifinals 2-0.
However, their luck ran out in the final when they were beaten by Sutherland 3-2.
The championships start on Thursday on the Waitemata Harbour and feature defending champion and Emirates Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker, BMW Oracle Racing chief executive and skipper Chris Dickson, Gavin Brady and Dickson's brother Scott.
* Veteran yachtsman Tony Bullimore, 67, who has been missing somewhere in the Indian Ocean for 11 days, has made contact with his family. Bullimore's communications system on his 102ft catamaran Doha went down on November 7, as he and his crew of four sailed to Australia ahead of a round-the-world record attempt. Yesterday, he made contact with his wife after coming close enough to land to get a mobile phone signal.
Bullimore was famously rescued in 1997 during the Vendee Globe solo non-stop race when his boat capsized.